Officials: Wildfires will blaze until rain season

PHOENIX — The wildfires sizzling through dried-out forests and grasslands across the Southwest are a bad omen in a fire season that is expected to continue for weeks until nature provides relief in the form of seasonal rains.

Fire officials are working to contain existing blazes even as they brace for new threats, setting up a dangerous and frustrating summer. But authorities don't expect to be stressed beyond their limits.

While much of the South and Southwest has received less winter precipitation than normal, the rain and snow farther north has led to huge snowpack in the Sierra Nevada range in California and in the Rockies.

The wildfire outlook issued by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, calls for above-normal fire potential in the Southwest through September, but normal or milder than normal fire conditions across the rest of the West.

Millions of acres across Arizona, New Mexico and west Texas have been scorched in recent weeks.

And firefighters are battling tinder boxes in east Texas and north Florida, as well — officials blame fires in those states for at least six deaths this year, including two forest rangers killed Monday near the Florida-Georgia state line.

Rains are expected to reduce the fire danger in Florida this week, but seasonal storms that normally stop the threat in the Southwest aren't expected to come until mid-July at the soonest. Officials say that means the three large fires now churning across Arizona's forestlands will not be the last.

Forestry officials say the state has seen one of its most dangerous fire seasons in years, with more than 1,500 fires burning 1,300 square miles so far. That total far exceeds 2010, when just 132 square miles burned across the state.

As thousands of firefighters are battling that blaze and the two others in Arizona, hundreds more have been stationed around the state for quick response to prevent any new threats from growing out of control.

Virtually all the fires in Arizona this year have been human caused, said Cam Hunter, Arizona's deputy state forester.

"We're not even into our really hot days," Hunter said Tuesday. "We're really dependent on people being as conscientious as they've ever been when they're doing anything that can cause a spark or has a flame and is an ignition source."